Did anyone ever experience a colleague collapsing or getting very ill on your unit and that your colleague became the patient?
It happened to me last year, I had graduated 8 months before...
I work in a long-term-care facility and our unit mainly focuses on palliative care and patients in a persistent vegetative state but we also have some rehab patients. There are doctors on call but for (rare) critical situations we need to call an ambulance because we don't have the equipment that's available in a hospital. That means that in a serious situation it depends on us until the ambulance arrives.
It happened at the beginning of my shift around 8 a.m. after taking care of my first patient I send him ahead to the unit livingroom for breakfast while I cleaned up because he had an early appointment in the hospital. Suddenly I hear him call out to me and just by the way he called out I knew it was really serious. I had a young girl shadowing me that was going to do flex work on our unit over the summer. I rushed into the livingroom where he pointed at my collegue who was laying on the floor.
I pushed the emergency button and I fell down on my knees to assess her. At first I thought she was having a seizure because she was all cramped up and gasping but within seconds she became extremely pale then blue and then a deep shade of purple. I tried to find a pulse which was absent and then she stopped breathing all together and I knew she was in cardiogenic shock. I send my flexworker to find my other colleagues and I started CPR and in the next moment I was on my own.
I can't possibly tell you what I was thinking at the moment I only remember my own heart racing and realizing that she was going to slip away from under me. I was convinced she was dying right then and there. In the next minute my fellow nurses rushed in and while one of them immediately started to help me with the CPR the other one started calling the ambulance, a doctor and several other people.
It seemed to last an eternity before two other nurses who were called in to assist us took over. I had no clue how long it took but I was exhausted and I stood back and watched. The next moment two ambulances were there (protocol in my country for cardiac arrest) and the paramedics put her on an IV and on a monitor, she was in VF and they started to shock her with the defib paddles six or seven times. The paramedics tried to intubate here but weren't able to because of the spasms in her airway and they continued bagging her. After another 20/30 minutes they finally had a rhytm and they took her to the hospital.
In the next hour I was trying to grasp what had happened, praying for her to live because she was only 49 years old. Until we finally heard that she made it and that she was groggy but talking and recognizing my colleague that went with her to the hospital and that the first prognosis was very good.
She's back at work now :)
I have always known that it was very probable that I would have to perform CPR on a patient sooner or later. But to have the life of someone you know very well in your hands is definately another story. It's been with me for quite some time, especially the image of her seizing and turning blue. Did any of you have an experience like this?
We once had a nurse arrest on the 11-7 shift.I responded to the code and we worked on her for over an hour.She survived and was able to return to work.She had a known heart problem.The scary part was that she collapsed and finally another nurse heard her moaning and called the code.
I was really proud of the team that responded to her code-the family sent a letter to the newspaper to thank us.
Specializes in Jack of all trades, and still learning.
That must have been terrifying. Code blues are one of those things that impact on someone strongly and to have it happen to a colleague with you being responsible for their care...I can't imagine what that was like!
I'd say an angel was watching over her shoulder, but there were some practical angels on the floor for her that day..
BTW I have been on the other end. As a person with epilepsy I had the one and only tonic clonic seizure in 17 yrs of nursing one morning at work. Of course my colleagues knew what they were doing and jumped in - not that I remember of course - but what I really appreciated was the non-judgmental and caring attitude I experienced when I returned. That's nurses for you...
Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.
Very good job! Kudos to you! =)
I work in a psych facility, and for some strange reason it seems to happen here quite a lot. Just a couple of mornings ago, an employee from our cafeteria seized right in front of the door to medical records.
A couple of years ago, one of the guys from security dropped dead of a heart attack right in front of one of the nurse's stations. I mean, he was gone just like that. =(
1] got a call at 7am begging me to come in because the nurse who was on duty had 'fallen out' this was foreseeable because she had gone to the don and asked for as much extra shifts because she was in desperate need of money..don in her wisdom gave her 14 doubles in a row..about 9 days into this is when she had the spell. i don't know if it was a heart problem or not but the emts shocked her a couple of times she survived
2] other time a nurse in the hospital setting on an other floor but we had frequently taken lunch break at same time so i knew her quite well
i came to work one day and they said that she had dropped to floor at end of previous days work..code team and all on floor responded but she was dead . she was in early forties
old saying is you never know when you wake up in the morning if you will see the sunset
My place of work had an employee suffer cardiac arrest. Luckily she did survive and is doing well. I figure what better place for something to happen than medical facility full of trained people and equipment.
Great job! Yes, I've had a co-worker collapse on me and my fellow nurses. It wasn't fun...I had nightmares afterward. This nurse had a lot of health issues. I have a concern about chronically ill nurses....it starts to interfere with your job when the nurse has to constantly go out to lay down because of a migraine, or has to sit down to check a B/P, when you have to watch over the nurse's patients.
If a nurse is this sick, they should take a leave of abscence or just retire.
1] got a call at 7am begging me to come in because the nurse who was on duty had 'fallen out' this was foreseeable because she had gone to the don and asked for as much extra shifts because she was in desperate need of money..don in her wisdom gave her 14 doubles in a row..about 9 days into this is when she had the spell. i don't know if it was a heart problem or not but the emts shocked her a couple of times she survived
2] other time a nurse in the hospital setting on an other floor but we had frequently taken lunch break at same time so i knew her quite well
i came to work one day and they said that she had dropped to floor at end of previous days work..code team and all on floor responded but she was dead . she was in early forties
old saying is you never know when you wake up in the morning if you will see the sunset
14 doubles in a row? That's nuts. I would collapse, too!
a coworker i was talking to, stopped talking, got rather lethargic and grey clammy diaphoretic
so we slapped on a monitor, slapped in a lock, drew blood, did ecg and found her to be hypotensive and brady then vs returned to normal and she revived
of to emerg and full recovery from vagal from something bad she ate at lunch !
chewyd
16 Posts
We once had a nurse arrest on the 11-7 shift.I responded to the code and we worked on her for over an hour.She survived and was able to return to work.She had a known heart problem.The scary part was that she collapsed and finally another nurse heard her moaning and called the code.
I was really proud of the team that responded to her code-the family sent a letter to the newspaper to thank us.